Should schools monitor students' social media accounts?

ST. LOUIS (KSDK) - As the Twitterverse and other social media worlds continue to grow and change, the conversation surrounding monitoring of accounts and privacy on these sites heats up.

School officials in Glendale, Calif. hired a company called Geo Listening to track the social media posts of 13,000 middle and high school students, according to a CBS News story. The purpose is to step in if a student discusses issues such as bullying, violence or substance abuse.

The cost for the service is more than $40,000.

In the St. Louis metropolitan area, two college students have recently been arrested for threatening comments posted on their social media accounts.

In the St. Louis Community College incident, the student tweeted at the school's Twitter handle. The college doesn't monitor individual student accounts, but it does monitor its social media accounts and interactions.

In the St. Charles Community College case, a college employee monitors tweets sent on campus.